Practical jokes

What is the most hideous/horrible/ingenious practical joke you have ever pulled in a planning office?

Years ago when I got a new job, I asked the new boss to send me a copy of his jurisdiction's comp plan so I could read it before I moved. One of my co-workers wanted to take a look. So, then I was reading it and saw, in the Recreation element, "Acquire Loren Hamm property". Mr. Hamm was the most godawful citizen I had ever had to deal with. I ran screaming into my boss's office, "Oh my God, he's there, too!" and he was SO sympathetic. When I started my new job, I asked the new boss about Mr. Hamm; he looked at his copy and said "There's no Mr. Hamm in my plan". My old co-workers had exactly copied the font and inserted the policy just to make me nuts.

Well we had this super foaming at the mouth bible thumper of a admin person and one day she runs down the office hall screaming and crying like she had seen the devil himself. She said the end was here-the devil and demons had taken over her computer.

The more level headed of the staff went to see what was going on and low and behold her computer was indeed working on its own-doing things in her outlook account.

seems the computer guys thought it would be funny to scare her and log into her computer remotely and move stuff around-she failed to notice the icon on the bottom right of her screen indicating this. she thought the end was here-in her computer!

Remember this motto to live by: "Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO- HOO what a ride!'"

Originally posted by Mike DeVuono Several years back we got a rainbow flag and stuck it to a magnet, then stuck the magnet on this guy's car. He drove around with it on for weeks (he never washed the car).

We were going to do that to our engineer last year, but we were affraid of "escalating retributions" !

During a lunch hour, one of my coworkers bought a new toilet seat for her house. We spent the afternoon putting it on the desk chairs of those who were out. It was more fun watching people return it to its owner; some were pretty mad.

My present office lacks the critical mass of interesing people needed to pull off jokes of any kind. However, when I worked at the city, practical jokes were a weekly habit. Many of them are too difficult to try to explain in writing. You just had to be there.

A Different Office

Once in a land far away I was busy blowing up this one guy's country and we were out driving around in a hummer. The three of us in the vehicle that were awake found an Iraqi tank that was abandoned. Our SFC was asleep in the front passenger's seat. We pulled up in front of the tank, with the SFC’s seat right in front of the front end of the tank. He was about five feet away. We were under the barrel of the main gun. Then on the count of three we all looked at the tank and screamed in horror. He shot up and then came mentally unglued for about five seconds. It took him 15 minutes to decide if he was not going to have the Commander give us all an Article 15. Ahh…..good times.

el Guapo is a former 20 year +/- urban planner (just like you) who thought becoming an attorney was a good life choice.

Re: A Different Office

Originally posted by El Guapo Once in a land far away I was busy blowing up this one guy's country and we were out driving around in a hummer. The three of us in the vehicle that were awake found an Iraqi tank that was abandoned. Our SFC was asleep in the front passenger's seat. We pulled up in front of the tank, with the SFC’s seat right in front of the front end of the tank. He was about five feet away. We were under the barrel of the main gun. Then on the count of three we all looked at the tank and screamed in horror. He shot up and then came mentally unglued for about five seconds. It took him 15 minutes to decide if he was not going to have the Commander give us all an Article 15. Ahh…..good times.

One more.

Having spent my formative years in the Army's Bomb Squad it was common for members to boobytrap other's desks, lockers and other personal items. Most of these were electrical devices that would pop an old fashioned camera flash cube. Every now and then during the week a flash or two would go off in the office. The rule was that if you were the last one flashed - you bought the first round of beer Friday afternoon. There had to be a witness. Thus, the closer we got to Friday the more cautious we became when opening our personal spaces. About 50% of the devices functioned as planned against some very seasoned Bomb Squad professionals. Many of these devices were very creative.

el Guapo is a former 20 year +/- urban planner (just like you) who thought becoming an attorney was a good life choice.

Poof!

Once during a joint-service school formal room inspection by several junior officers and a SGM we got even with two Air Farce clowns next door who were always screwing with everyone's stuff. As the SGM entered their room to inspect in the next room we triggered a device that blew (with a CO2 cartridge) the entire contents of a bottle of talcum powder out of the air equalization duct in their barracks room. The moment before the inspection party was due to enter their room the thing went off. Classic. There those two punks were standing at attention next to their bunks in a swirling cloud of white powder.

It took them days to clean the room to standards.

To this day people only suspect who the mad powdered was.

el Guapo is a former 20 year +/- urban planner (just like you) who thought becoming an attorney was a good life choice.

While in college I worked in the Student Union at a restaurant. There was this girl Michele that was really cool and a really good friend of mine (and the two other pranksters). Well there was the mulleted, dirty, and annoying cook that worked in the main kitchen and we used to tease her about him liking her. So we get the idea that it would be hilarious to send her flowers on Valentines day with a love note from him. She flipped out, threw the flowers in the trash and started crying (before she knew who did it). Two of us told her that we were in on the joke, but rested the blame on the third guy, who didn't work with us. She was extremely pissed and we had to apologize over and over again. We also had to buy her beer after work...lots of beer. After 5 or 6, she forgave us.

After that incident, I came to the conclusion that practical jokes involving single women on valentines day were not such a good idea.

"I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are."

When I was a restaurant schlepp...

A friend of mine brought in a poodle skull that he had dug up and cleaned off. We were working 3rd shift in a restaurant and he hid it in the salad bar cooler. The hostess couldn't understand why we were sooooo anxious to have her pull down and put away the salad bar when it closed at midnight...

When she found it she screamed and came running out into the restaurant, still pretty full of people. Fortunately she found him first - she kicked him in the shin with all the force she could muster, then slapped him silly. I was smart enough to go hide for a while.

I haven't done anything too bad... I usually mess with people's computers. I've changed the wallpaper of a co-worker after some particularly hard hearings to a giant photo of the Hearings Examiner with the line "I am watching you!" underneath (and inserted hard copies through his zoning ordinance... he left them there, because he thought they were funny)...

I used to have the sloppiest guy in the next cube and he didn't know how to operate the computer very well. He always got error messages with the appropriate corresponding windows sound. When he was gone one day I changed all the error messages to Homer Simpson's "doh", which ended up driving him nuts. The sad part is that the joke was on me... I ended up hearing it like 20 times a day... and his office was so gross that when I used his mouse and picked up my hand to leave, the freakin' mouse was *stuck to my hand*. I never went in there again.

I've done other things at other cities (usually involving putting people in inappropriate photoshop pictures )... but listing all those would be too long.

1) The ability to send e-mail with fake headers can be vey useful. One co-worker where I used to work used to get the occasional bombardment of lengthy, hard-core religious rants. Always when I was in the next cubicle ... just so I could hear the reaction.

2) That same co-worker ... I'd replace his girlie wallpaper with images that you might see in the pages of "Out!". It's even more fun when you screw with his registry settings, so he can't change it!

3) That same co-worker again ... every day, I'd move the outermost wall of his cube in by a half-inch to an inch.

4) Keymapping. The geeks know what I'm talking about.

5) Ahhh ... back in the day, when I had two planning techs that were MINE! One took over business registrations from me. Occasionally, there would be an application for an offbeat use like a cockroach fighting arena or a "case de las putas." (This was New Mexico, where, if you worked there long enough, you really would get a legit inquiry about someone wanting to do dogfights or cockfights or whatnot as a home occupation.) The other did building permits .. FROM HELL!, when I had my way. Try applications on forms that were 15th generation copies. Addresses like "Cinco houses north para Chuy's old place en Bernal y Tornillo, or an arrow pointing to a general location on a Chamber of Commerce map. Exhibits being scrawled with pencil on paper cut from grocery bags. All comments in Spanish. Varas for units of length. Memories ...

6) One time, I set up a small device that would let out a short, high-pitched "BEEP!" at random intervals (every five to 20 minutes) in a co-worker's office. You can't tell where the BEEP! is coming from, and because it's random, you never kow when it's going to hit.

7) Whenever the town manager, whose political viewpoint makes EG and Prudence seem like commies in comparion, asks me to fix his laptop, I'll take the liberty of changing some of his bookmarks. The link to eBay ... well, it's still named "eBay," but somehow it's connected to Mother Jones magazine. Clicking on the Google link takes him to the Utne Reader, Drudge Report goes to Bartcop.com, and so on.

8) Back in college, when I was a pizza delivery veteran, my planning knowledge proved helpful for practical jokes. Take ghost streets, for instance ... platted and on the map, but not there in reality Great for rookie deliveries during slow times. "I went to 38 Deer Run Court just yesterday. They're regulars, and they tip well. Why don't you try it again."

Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. -- Edward Abbey